Under President Vladimir Putin Russia is going to turn into
an authoritarian state, ex-world chess champion Garry Kasparov said on Thursday.

In his article entitled “Putin’s Appeasers”
published in The Wall Street Journal, he calls on Western countries not to
ignore Putin’s “march to dictatorship”.

“The costs of this change for the Russian people and
the world are high and getting higher. Not only are there real costs in security
terms, but by failing to stand up for democratic values in Russia, the Bush
administration gravely weakens its moral authority, opens itself up to charges
of hypocrisy as it tries to make the case for building democracy in the Middle
East,” Kasparov wrote.

He compared the relationship between the West and Russia
with the situation in Adolf Hitler’s Germany quoting Neville Chamberlain’s
remark that he could “do business” with Hitler. “From World
War II to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the ethnic cleansing
of Slobodan Milosevic, history is full of examples of the West ignoring signs
of impending explosion,” Kasparov wrote. He added that a possible meeting
of G7 in Moscow in 2006 which will mean Russia’s full integration “will
be worse than having the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936”.

Kasparov also compares Putin’s regime with Stalin’s.
“The language used by the current Kremlin regime has not been heard
in Russia since Stalin. Official talk of foreign meddlers and fifth columnists
will send chills down the spine of any student of history. If this familiar
train continues to run on schedule we can expect violent repression and purges
next.”

The chess player and the chairman of the liberal Committee
2008: Free Choice said that Putin had started the second campaign in Chechnya,
took over various media, put businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky in jail for
having “resisted the Kremlin’s intimidation”, and “presided
over rampant electoral fraud”. Kasparov also recalled Putin’s
recent political reforms that will cancel elections for governors and give
the president the power to dissolve regional parliaments.

“There is also a pending amendment that will allow
the Kremlin to exercise direct control over the appointment of judges across
the country. For several years Russia has been a democracy in name only; now
it will cease to be even that,” he wrote.

“It is now clear,” Kasparov said, “that
(Putin) will not step down voluntarily. When his regime ends it will end in
bloodshed. Western leaders are hoping that their successors will be stuck
with the bill. How much are we willing to pay?”